


stones change shape

by kimaracretak



Series: and there the black and white will end [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Arguing, F/F, Memories, breaking up before you're even together like real socially awkward druids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 09:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16595384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Danger grows in Tal'Dorei, and Keyleth and Raishan have an argument about magic.





	stones change shape

**Author's Note:**

> Daffodil: memory, awareness and inner reflection

Keyleth sleeps less easily, the closer they get to Emon. Part of it is the increasing number of people, in the woods and along the roads - the merchants and travellers all too eager to take advantage of the season's good weather to speed their journeys. On their own, Keyleth doesn't think much of them, but taken together, something about their speed is almost unsettling.

But part of it is the rumors. Travellers are worse gossips than birds, and none of the things Keyleth hears on the road fall under any banner she would call reassuring.

"Dead goliaths and liches," she muses to Raishan as the two of them rest at the side of the river during one of the long twilights that seem to all be blending into each other. "Have you ever heard the like?"

She asks it without much expectation of an answer, most of her attention captured by a raven-haired figure playing with what can't possibly be a bear further down the river, so Raishan's quiet but firm "Yes" takes her entirely by surprise.

"What?" Keyleth sits up, wincing as her antlers get momentarily caught on the low-hanging willow branches. "Where would - when did -"

Raishan is gazing at some far-off point on the horizon, her fingertip firmly in her mouth. It's the look she gets whenever she thinks Keyleth's pried too far into her background, the one that means she's deciding whether she's already said too much.

"Liches," she says finally, when Keyleth's just about given up on getting an answer. "When I was ... younger, when I was studying. There was an ... accident." There's a smile pulling at the corner of Raishan's mouth as she sinks deeper into the memory, as the noise of the bear and its keepers down the river seems to fade. "It wasn't my fault, of course. That's the point of accidents, there's no fault at all. But when the day was over, well, some people who had been alive were liches."

Keyleth can only stare, mouth agape. Of all the memories they'd shared of their childhoods, their educations, Raishan had never shared anything like this. And she was still smiling, as if completely unaware of how thoroughly she'd just upset Keyleth's world.

"Nah," she says, when the silence has been uncomfortable for too long, and she can no longer hold back the disbelieving laughter. "You're joking. You canst an't just ... turn people ... like that." She trails off, suddenly desperately aware that she doesn't actually know how one would go about creating a lich, accidentally or not. The gap between them has never felt quite so large.

Raishan's smile drops and, quicker than Keyleth can blink, she's turned around and grasped Keyleth's chin in her hand, forcing her to meet her eyes. Her nails are still painfully sharp, like the talons of some bird of prey, and the fingertip that had been in her mouth is leaving a damp smudge against Keyleth's cheek.

For the first time since they met, Keyleth understands that Raishan is dangerous, and it sparks something in her that she can't even begin to name.

"Listen to me, little one," Raishan says, so fiercely that Keyleth can't even bring herself to protest being called _little one_. "Magic is dangerous. Magic has a price. And if we are going to keep travelling together, keep learning together, I need you to know that as well. Have you truly never seen what happens in the dark? When magic goes wrong?"

Keyleth licks her lips, thinks about standing in front of the Tempest gate that had chosen her mother and then abandoned her. "Magic isn't like that," she says, wondering what Raishan's thinking behind her curiously vacant eyes. "Magic is like nature. It just is."

Raishan lets her go, disappointment flickering across her face so briefly that Keyleth wonders if she's just projecting her own feelings. "I had hoped you knew better by now," she says. "I've seen what you can do, and you have skill and power enough to put Melora to shame, if you try."

Keyleth turns back to the river. "And if I don't want to try?" She's not sure she wants to have a conversation about Melora with Raishan, not now.

Raishan shrugs. "Then I misjudged you."

For all the seeming lack of care in her voice, she doesn't speak more than ten words to Keyleth over the next few days.

The worst of it is, Keyleth isn't sure if they're better off that way. She doesn't know how to lose someone like Raishan.


End file.
